Rondine Cittadella della Pace will take part in the Barefoot Walk: Mothers’ Call for Peace in Rome on 24 March, a march promoted by two women-led movements committed to building peace in the Middle East: Women Wage Peace, from Israel, and Women of the Sun, a Palestinian organisation. One of their representatives was a guest at YouTopic 2025. Representing Rondine will be several staff members together with a number of Rondine Gold alumni, bearing witness to an experience that for years has transformed conflict into encounter, relationship and responsibility.
The march will move through the streets of Rome with a gesture that is both simple and radical: walking barefoot. As the organisers explain, the act evokes humility, humanity and closeness to a land wounded by bloodshed and pain, while also expressing the determination to defend the future of children against the logic of war.
The initiative is supported by Vital Voices Global Partnership and is part of the international Mothers’ Call movement, born from the alliance between Palestinian and Israeli women who are calling for mothers, women and communities to be fully recognised as essential participants in every peace process.
For Rondine, taking part in the march is not merely an act of solidarity, but an assumption of responsibility consistent with its own history. For years, Rondine has worked to ensure that the “enemy” does not remain an abstract figure to be fought, but becomes a face to encounter, a story to listen to, a relationship to rebuild. Rondine’s presence within this international mobilisation is meant to state clearly that peace is not born from the removal of pain, but from the ability to pass through it without surrendering it to hatred.
The Rondine Gold alumni will bring to Rome the tangible meaning of an experience that has made daily coexistence among young people from countries in conflict a living practice of transformation. Their presence will say that peace is not a rhetorical abstraction, but a demanding, fragile and necessary undertaking, built on relationships, time, trust and courage.
At an international moment marked by wars, polarisation and increasingly dehumanising language, the Barefoot Walk on 24 March seeks to reverse the picture: not a public square built against someone, but a space crossed together, in the name of children, life and a just peace. It is within this horizon that Rondine has chosen to be present: to bear witness to the fact that peace is not weakness, but the highest form of public responsibility.
